Humans may engage in human-to-computer dialogs with interactive software applications referred to herein as “automated assistants” (also referred to as “chatbots,” “interactive personal assistants,” “intelligent personal assistants,” “personal voice assistants,” “conversational agents,” etc.). For example, humans (which when they interact with automated assistants may be referred to as “users” or, in the context of a meeting, “participants”) may provide commands, queries, and/or requests (collectively referred to herein as “queries”) using free form natural language input which may be vocal utterances converted into text and then processed, and/or by typed free form natural language input. Automated assistants are typically invoked using predetermined vocal utterances (e.g., “OK Assistant”) and often perform various types of processing, such as speech-to-text processing, natural language processing, and/or semantic processing, only on those vocal utterances that immediately follow an invocation phrase.
During a meeting involving multiple human participants there is often an active or passive participant, sometimes referred to as a “secretary,” that takes notes about the meeting and shares those notes (e.g., as a summary of “action items” and/or “topics discussed”) with the meeting participants. Additionally or alternatively, one or more meeting participants may take their own notes during the meeting. In either case, with notetaking it is likely that some information discussed during the meeting will be lost. Although a stenographer could be engaged to generate a full or as-full-as-possible written transcript of the meeting, stenography can be expensive and/or impractical for routine or informal meetings.
It is also common during meetings for participants to operate computing devices to augment the meeting with information. In some cases one or more participants may project or otherwise present a series of slides to guide discussion. As another example, when questions are raised (“what flights are cheapest?”, “what will the weather be like when we're there?”, “what seats are available?”, etc.), one or more participants may manually operate a computing device such as their mobile phone to perform an Internet search seeking responsive information that they can then convey to the group. These searches may interrupt the flow of the meeting and/or cause the searching participant to miss discussion while they perform their research.